<div dir="ltr">hi <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 6:17 PM, JW <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jmango@mail.com">jmango@mail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Tue, Jul 29, Bill Kendrick wrote:<br>
<br>
> DAMN toothpaste makers and car manufacturers for giving me choice!!!<br>
> ;)<br>
<br>
Bill, as a real newbie to Linux, may I offer my point of view? </blockquote><div><br>jmango, thanks for your opinion. We do really need and value new users' opinions.<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Having<br>
tried several distributions, the real problem is inconsistency,<br>
flakiness, and reinventing the wheel. Why do we need to have so many<br>
interfaces that all do the same thing, </blockquote><div><br>jmango has a point here. I would like to recommend that the members of this list please consider purchasing a copy of "The Paradox of Choice":<br><br>
<blockquote class="templatequote">
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<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy" title="Autonomy">Autonomy</a> and Freedom of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice" title="Choice">choice</a> are critical to our <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_being" class="mw-redirect" title="Well being">well being</a>, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">Americans</a>
have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus,
presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't seem to be benefiting
from it psychologically.</p>
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<div class="templatequotecite">—<cite>quoted from Ch.5, "The Paradox of Choice", 2004</cite></div>
</blockquote><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice</a><br><br>Please also consider reading "The Political Brain" <br><br><a href="http://www.thepoliticalbrain.com/videos.php">http://www.thepoliticalbrain.com/videos.php</a><br>
<br>which posits that voters vote not for the candidate whose policies most closely parallel the voter's own interests, but rather for the candidate about whom they "feel good." <br><br>In selection of both candidates for office and products, consumers and voters filter their choices based on _emotional_ factors first. Intellectual factors don't appear as significant motivators until about item number 11 on the list. <br>
<br>I submit that until we, the FOSS community come up with eye candy that is as easy and compelling as the Mac, we will not break out of single digits _in the US_ . Maybe we will break out sooner in other countries, but not in the US. We really need to elevate our dialog to considering that the end user is the "decider", not us, the geeks. We need to educate ourselves on the science of marketing, because it is every bit as empirical a science as is computer science. Ironically, as clumsy as Windows-using marketers appear to us, so too do we appear willfully ingorant _if_ we ignore the hard science that goes into shaping the way that consumer demand is channeled. <br>
</div></div><br>-- <br>Christian Einfeldt,<br>Producer, The Digital Tipping Point<br>
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